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Law Enforcement in Anglo-Saxon England

On this topic, there is not much to say.
Mostly, because, the idea of both ‘laws’ and ‘enforcement’ were largely separate
constructs. So, the conception of a group of people to enforce laws simply did
not exist for much of the Anglo-Saxon period.

Even
so, if we were to take a stretch and account for tribal customs, then perhaps
we might arrive at a deeper understanding. Unfortunately, our understanding of
Anglo-Saxon tribes is lacking (or at least my moment of research it is,
anyways). We know that Anglo-Saxon tribes operated along values which stressed
honor and vengeance; in a certain sense, we could describe this code of conduct
as pseudo-laws. After all, the failure to avenge the death of a loved one would
result in dishonor, hence it has a kind of legal aura to it in the sense that
such it was a codified mode of behaving associated with custom and social
formations.

Going
a bit deeper along this train of thoughts, we perhaps could classify religious
structures, such as monasteries, and their accompanying dogma and theology, as
a kind of laws; enforcement could be seen both in the ‘less than actual’, as
arrests and imprisonment, since beliefs in Hell swayed behavior, but also in
the concrete ‘actual’ sense since the disseminators of such faith would need to
be controlled by a centralized holding. But if we were to entertain this
conceptualization then we must also admit that it is a kind of law enforcement
only relevant to a small minority of the population.

But
when we think of laws and enforcement as we do in the contemporary sense, it is
not until late in Anglo-Saxon history that positions were created which we in
modernity might recognize. Not until the mid-tenth century, around the time of
King Edgar’s reign, when a great deal of land was ruled by a single house and
the idea of a English identity began to emerge, that we see laws specifically
targeting thieves. Under King Ӕthelred, such laws would be augmented by
empowering bailiffs (‘reeves’), those who often collected taxes in the shires;
a position such as this eventually became known as a ‘sheriff’ and extends well
into our present day as the legal role was enforced and refined to include more
and more specific duties. Though, it should be said that the original template
for this position originated earlier in the Anglo-Saxon age with the existence
of the alderman (Blair 63, The Anglo-Saxon Age: A Very Short Introduction).

So,
to conclude, though there is not much to say in regards to law enforcement in
Anglo-Saxon England at this time, we have been able to extrapolate some take-away
points from the scant bit of information we have probed at this moment in our
research. We saw that maybe codifications of violence as well as theological
work perhaps could be considered law enforcement in their own laws. But we also
examined, briefly, the role of actual law enforcement officials and how they
became empowered from a previous age’s form of social organization. Though
hardly decisive, it is in the very least fascinating.

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Lately, I was browsing around online and found another handy resource for aspiring medievalists.

Enter, Western Michigan University's Medieval Institute!

The site has links to an extensive book shop, scholarly journals, as well as a free download. See below for links.

General listing: http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/medievalpress/
Index of titles available for purchase: http://www.wmich.edu/medievalpublications/all-titles
The 'Medieval Globe' book(s): http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/medieval_globe/ (Click on title(s) for free download)

Okay, that is all for now. Sometime soon I think that I would like to organize all of my resource links so that I, as well as you, have a concrete listing of reliable resources. Until then, we shall have to make due.